BERGER, John. UK art critic, artist & author on cultural boycott of Apartheid Israel: "the situation of the Palestinians is worse than that of black South Africans under apartheid"

John Peter Berger (born 5 November 1926) is an English art critic, novelist,
painter and author of the novel ”G.” which
won the 1972 Booker Prize, and “Ways of Seeing” a BBC TV series and book on art criticism (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Berger
).

John Berger advocating a cultural boycott of Apartheid Israel
in a letter to the UK
Guardian signed by 95 creative writers
and artists (2006): “There
is a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon,
albeit daily violated by Israeli overflights. Meanwhile the day-to-day
brutality of the Israeli army in Gaza and the West Bank continues. Ten Palestinians are killed for
every Israeli death; more than 200, many of them children, have been killed
since the summer. UN resolutions are flouted, human rights violated as
Palestinian land is stolen, houses demolished and crops destroyed. For
archbishop Desmond Tutu, as for the Jewish former ANC military commander now
South African minister of security, Ronnie Kasrils, the situation of the
Palestinians is worse than that of black South Africans under apartheid.

Meanwhile, western governments refer to Israel's legitimate right of
self-defence, and continue to supply weaponry. The challenge of apartheid was
fought better. The non-violent international response to apartheid was a
campaign of boycott, divestment and UN-imposed sanctions which enabled the
regime to change without bloodshed.

Today, Palestinians teachers, writers, film-makers and non-governmental
organisations have called for a comparable academic and cultural boycott of Israel as
offering another path to a just peace. This call has been endorsed
internationally by university teachers in many European countries, by
film-makers and architects, and by some brave Israeli dissidents. It is now
time for others to join the campaign - as Primo Levi asked: "If not now,
when?" We call on creative writers and artists to support our Palestinian
and Israeli colleagues by endorsing the boycott call. Read the Palestinian call
pacbi.org.

John Berger signed the following letter together with Tariq
Ali, Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, Naomi Klein, Harold Pinter, Arundhati Roy, José Saramago, and Howard Zinn on the occasion of the 2006
devastation of Gaza and Lebanon by the Apartheid Israeli military machine
(2006):

“The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine
began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother,
from Gaza. An
incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following
day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed a
negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are
approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.

That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the
illegal military occupation of the West Bank
and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly
that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable
but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly
employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land
alloted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.

Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones.
The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and
crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of
missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this
for a moment?

Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But
the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in
order to divert world attention from a
long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is
nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.

This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and
often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be
unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted.” [2].